The Honourable Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Sunday Dare finally has fulfilled his vow to pay the owed last April allowances by the AFN(ATHLETICS FEDERATION OF NIGERIA) during the CAA U-18/U-20 championships in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire. The allowances were owed under the now suspended president of the federation, Shehu Ibrahim Gusau’s leadership.
Last year, the young Nigerian athletes competed in the championship in Abidjan under the most uncomfortable conditions, where they always had to travel by road for mostly three days, and at the end of the day, were denied their allowances. And the painful part was that, their allowances were denied even after the FMYSD (Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development) released over N13m for the competition.
However, subsequent actions were taken after the competition when Charles Himah, the acting representative on the board of the AFN, and Hon. Olamide George, the acting president of the federation, directly appealed to the Sports Minister to have a look into the athletes’ problem.
As a result, on the start of 2020, the Sports Minister, said that athletes welfare will be one of his primary focus in his sports development policy, and will see to it that they are fairly compensated. Today, he made redeemed his vows and made an order that the athletes should be given part of their allowances. In his statement he opined thus.
“We are very grateful to the Honourable Minister for coming to the rescue of the athletes who were subjected to indecent treatments just because they wanted to represent their country, Nigeria,” said the AFN acting president, Honourable Olamide George, who confirmed that the athletes started receiving bank alerts last weekend.
“With Mr Dare as Sports Minister, our sports, especially track and field is surely in good hands,” he added and revealed the board of the federation will be meeting on Thursday in Abuja at its Secretariat.
“We are meeting on Thursday and part of what we shall discuss will be welfare of athletes. We are not happy that we begged the Sports Minister to bail us out after approval was received for Nigeria’s participation in the Abidjan championships and money duly released. That was one of the reasons we asked our suspended president to come and give account of that and many other financial infractions as well as breaches of the federation’s constitution,’ George said.
And it was also there that the news broke out that, Alhaji Ahmed Ahedjo Kaita, a sports philanthropist, has now been replaced on the board of the federation by Solomon Ogba.
The Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development on Thursday, made the announcement in a press release that Ahedjo Kaita, who is currently the chairman of Katsina State Athletics Association, with records of having sponsoring tons of athletes to a wide array of local competitions, has occupied the office of Philanthropist/Ex-Officio, which was handled by Solomon Ogba since July 2017.
A lot of Nigerians also expressed their gratitude towards Sunday Dare’s commitment to his promise on their social media pages.
